OptionStrat Blog

The War & Some Surprises

The war in Iran is entering its second month and its effects on the markets have been well-covered by the financial press. However, there have been some reverberations that have slipped through the net, mostly...

Oil, Again

The crucial piece of information that is driving equity and energy markets is when the war will end, or a ceasefire declared. “Relatively soon,” seems to be the consensus opinion, but no one seems to...

A Crazy Day in Oil

It seems that every few years investors are forced to learn about the Straits of Hormuz. Oil traders have always been familiar with its constraints but now details of its geography and strategic importance are...

Reality Bites!

Bubble speculation is one of the markets’ favorite pastimes, but for most the definition remains elusive. A useful guide to technological bubbles has been provided by author Alasdair Nairn in his book Engines That Move...

Metals: One Crazy Ride!

Precious metals finally called it quits last Friday. Silver drove off a cliff and shed 25.6%, gold 13.4 %, platinum 16.8%, and palladium 15.73%. And yes, those are daily changes, not monthly or yearly. Friday...

Economic & Geopolitical Uncertainty

Economic and geopolitical uncertainty, the main theme of 2025, seems to be accelerating into the new year. Two events this week may add fuel to the fire: the Supreme Court ruling on tariffs, and the...

Santa Rallies!

Unbelievably, it’s December and we are approaching the end of the year. Almost always, traders now start talking about the so-called Santa Rally. As I’ve noted in the past, investors love patterns, rules, and metrics...

Is Strategy’s Strategy Over?

At the end of last month, I wrote a blog entitled “A Bad Strategy for Strategy?” that was really about the perils of leveraged ETFs (although I did use two ETFs related to Strategy (MSFT)...

Two Updates

This week, I’m going to update two unrelated topics I wrote about previously, bitcoin treasury companies and quantum computing. First up, bitcoin treasury companies, or financial innovation at its best. I’ve written about these previously,...

Next Generation Options Flow Detection is Here

Hey traders, We’re excited to share some important improvements to the OptionStrat flow platform. OptionStrat flow consolidates large and unusual trades into the actual strategies that traders and institutions are making. With this week’s updates,...

New Look & New Options Model

We’re excited to announce the launch of our new branding for OptionStrat! At OptionStrat, we strive to make options investing easier and more accessible for everyone, regardless of experience level. Our new branding reflects this...

New Greek Visualization Features

Our options profit calculator tool is used by traders around the globe to visualize the potential profit and loss of option strategies over time. Many traders tell us it’s the first step they do before...

Auto-Updating quotes now available!

Auto-updating quotes are now available to all premium subscribers! (Free users will still receive 15 minute delayed quotes which must be manually refreshed) Currently the auto-updating quotes are only available for the options profit calculator portion of...

Options Calculator Improvements

Today we are launching a series of improvements to our options profit calculator product known as the strategy builder. These changes focus on making it easier to manage strategies throughout their lifetime. Here’s the quick...

Indices (SPX, VIX, etc) and Global Trading Hours

New index data We are expanding our platform to include data from some major stock market indices and their options: SPX: S&P 500 Index VIX: Cboe Volatility Index XSP: Mini S&P 500 Index (Similar to SPY at 1/10th...

New Premium Feature: Probability Distributions

As an addition to the premium chance of profit feature, premium users can now view an overlay of the stock’s probability distribution when using the graph view in our options profit calculator. The probability distribution...

Update: Saved Trade & Paper Trading Improvements

OptionStrat’s saved trade system has been revamped! Over the past few weeks we have added some highly requested features to give the saved trade system a makeover. Instead of being a simple list of saved...

New Feature: Historical Price Charts

We are launching an exciting new feature for OptionStrat today: Historical price charts! You can now view the past price history for any strategy by clicking the historical price button on the strategy builder screen....

Live Data Now Available

We are happy to announce that our live data plan is now available! Live data will apply to both the options profit calculator (aka strategy builder) and options optimizer tools. Stock and option quotes are...

New Feature: Custom Multi-Expiration Strategies

Since day one OptionStrat has had support for multi-expiration strategies such as calendar and diagonal spreads, and today we are launching an update to enhance the multi-expiration features. Now it is possible to add an...

OptionStrat Apps Now Available

OptionStrat is now available as an app for mobile devices! Now you can use OptionStrat on the go alongside your other mobile trading apps. All of the features available on the desktop version, including our options...

Introducing the Options Optimizer

Today we are releasing the new options optimizer tool for public testing. The options optimizer makes it easy to search through thousands of potential trades and focus on the ones that matter: the strategies with maximum return,...

OptionStrat Beta Launch

As of today OptionStrat is now available to the public! Thank you to the pre-beta testers who helped provide valuable feedback. OptionStrat is a tool for creating and visualizing option trades on U.S. stocks. It...